GNU Health 1.6 series released

This series brings a lot of exciting features, both from the technical and functional point of views.
On the technical side, the most important one is the compatibility with Tryton 2.4, and the demo database, so you can test it with data.

On the functional side, improvements in the gynecology module, especially in terms of screening (mammography, PAP tests, colposcopies... ) and history taking.
There has been major changes in the services and billing functionality, making easy the tracking of all the services done to a patient, and what would be subject to invoicing.

This new module allows to group all the services done to a patient, in either ambulatory or inpatient settings. The module will give the health center the possibility to also invoice selected services to a specific party (patient, insurance company .. ). Since the services are linked to products, the health center will keep a detailed record of the drugs and consumables used. They will also be able to relate the lab orders.

Thank you to all of you who have contributed to this new version of GNU Health. Thanks to the Tryton community for the great Tryton 2.4; to my colleagues from Thymbra for developing the graphics / reporting module (Sebastián), working on the documenation and testing (Cristina and Selene) and, of course, to all the GNU Health and GNU community for adopting and hosting our project !

About GNU Health

GNU Health is a free Health and Hospital Information System that provides the following functionality :

In this view, it's easy to look for patient's locations and status in the hospital. The colors visually differentiate the type of admissions.

We have also improve other sections, like vaccinations. Thanks to Andrew Gledhill (NHS) who proposed the addition of the vaccine lot and expiration date. Actually, the vaccine is integrated to the product, so all the production lot, traceability, and procurement is automated. Special controls for vaccine expiration dates have been put in place now.

I could write many pages, but it all comes down to one concept: ethics.
When I talk about Free Software, I talk about not only about freedom, but also community and good will from the software author. The latter probably is the most important one.
You write Free Software because you want to contribute to the community. It's an act of social activism. It's about sharing and helping out.
This April I got a mail from Chris Larsen, a doctor working in Rwanda, where he was asking OpenERP the scripts to upgrade to 6.x, since they needed to have the latest Medical version. The response he got was that the scripts were not publicly available anymore. If they wanted to upgrade, they would have to pay a support contract to OpenERP. This is the typical example of a vendor lock-in. They change the rules (even the license) and then the user becomestheir prisoner.
That very same day I started the implementation of GNU Health (previously called "medical") in the Tryton platform. B…